


rebuild, renew

by Vintar



Category: Fallout 4
Genre: F/F, Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-07
Updated: 2016-05-07
Packaged: 2018-06-06 22:14:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6772417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vintar/pseuds/Vintar
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cait's never really been into robots, but if there's one thing that she prides herself on, it's being adaptable.</p>
            </blockquote>





	rebuild, renew

Cait's never really been into robots. She doesn't get the appeal. Some of them suit her just fine-- especially the ones that dispense beer or bullets-- but on the whole, they give her the creeps. Hunks of metal with voices on tape, tellin' people what they want to hear, following their masters like weird pretend dogs. 

Nora seems to like 'em, though. Maybe it's a pre-war thing. The stories that Nora tells about her previous life always involve machines, playing music and cooking food and flying through the sky.

Maybe that's why you can't swing a cat in Sanctuary without running into one. From where Cait's sitting, leaning back on her dingy bed and looking out through the window, she can see Ada waddling up and down the road. Codsworth's hovering at the edge of the cornfield, Marcy shooing his flammable arse away from the plants. Valentine'll be kicking around somewhere, too, smoking cheap cigarettes and working on himself, taking his hands apart with a screwdriver like MacCready takes apart his guns. 

And then there's the other one...

"Breathe in," Curie commands. Her hand presses against Cait's ribcage, neat and precise. Her weight dents the bed alongside Cait, her palm warm. This close, Cait can see the faint spray of freckles ghosting across her cheeks, the regular twitch of her pulse in her throat. 

The Institute may be cold-blooded murdering lunatics, but they're good at what they do. Curie looks human. She looks _better_ than most humans Cait knows, bright eyed and sharp. Her body had spent its life being fed and bathed and cared for, far away from radiation and raiders and rotgut and all the shite that the world throws at people.

Cait should probably feel jealous, but she can't manage it. She looks at Curie, really _looks_ , taking in her smooth skin and dark eyes and her strange little smile, but the jealousy never kicks in. Neither do the regular robot heebie-jeebies, the sort she gets when a machine's playing at being human.

She's started to dream about the bloody girl, too. Usually like this, flannel and boots and short hair, but sometimes as the Miss Nanny, three eyes looking into her own, Cait's reflection shining back at her from that chrome body...

"And now breathe deeply for me, please."

Grateful for the interruption, Cait does. Curie's attention is... not exactly comforting, but familiar, in a way. She's used to being handled by doctors. A good fighter is a shame to waste, after all. The Zone always had someone to scrape her off of the floor, to tape her back together and send her back out again, crammed full of stimpacks and striped with uneven stitches.

Curie, though, is different. For starters, she actually knows what she's doing. She frowns at the rise and fall of Cait's ribs, pressing her fingers hard against the purpling stripes of scar tissue there hard enough to make Cait hiss.

"What do you think, doc? Are me lungs all present and accounted for?"

"I do not like the way it is constricting your breathing as it heals."

Cait shrugs as best she can. "I've had worse."

"I can see that." Curie drops her eyes from the twisted welts of Cait's new scars. Almost absent-mindedly, her fingertips trail down to run over old scars. With Cait's shirt raised, there's a lot of them on offer. If you knew the history of all her scars, you could trace her life right back to her childhood, winding her down to when she was, just for a short time, unhurt.

Some people in Cait's line of work get numb and cold, little more than robots themselves, but Cait's no stranger to feeling things. She gets angry, she gets happy, she lives with emotion riding her. Sometimes it takes a little something to make it kick in, and sometimes it takes a little something to bleed it out, but she's used to having emotions.

Still, embarrassment isn't something she feels often. She hadn't felt it when she's pulled her shirt up for Curie's examination, breasts bared, but it rises now, heat flooding her cheeks, blotting at her face. She wants to tug her shirt back down, cutting off whatever the hell it is she can see in Curie's expression.

She doesn't. 

Curie frowns, that neat little mouth forming a neat little line. "That bear! I swear that it nearly clawed you in two." She shifts her hand back away from Cait's old wounds and touches the very tips of her fingers to the scars that have confined Cait to bed for days. Numb, Cait can't feel them, even as she watches Curie touch her, skin to skin.

"I got it, though." Cait can't help but grin. She mimes an uppercut, then flexes.

Curie doesn't seem to find it as funny. "So you did! I did not know that one person could punch a bear to death. Truly, this must be the research that I have been placed in the world to gather. My job is over."

She puts her hands in her lap, folded, and glares out of the window. Cait has the impression that it's not because Codsworth's arse has finally set the corn on fire. 

"Are you _mad_ at me?" she manages, eyebrows raised.

Curie's eyes narrow, still looking out of the window. "What decent medic would not be mad at one of their patients putting themselves in harm's way?"

There's something going on that Cait doesn't have a full grasp on. "Hang on, I wasn't one of your patients until the bloody bear hit me."

"There's a general responsibility--" Curie begins, cheeks heating. "Your rash actions only make more hard work for me-- We all have a duty to be careful with medical supplies--" She bites down on her tirade, and scowls. "The next time you wish to fight a bear, please find yourself another doctor!" 

Curie bolts up from the bed, her movements sharp and awkward. The sudden movement jostles Cait, making her suck in a breath, and Cait freezes, her escape halted by professional concern.

Cait could just say that she's fine and let Curie go, ending... whatever that was. Maybe it really was nothing but a doctor being pissed off by a shitty patient. Cait doesn't entirely know, and the pain and the painkillers and all those fuckin' dreams about three metal arms aren't really helping. She could go back to sitting still in bed and waiting for the stimpacks to work their magic, staring out the window and watching the people of Sanctuary go about their boring lives.

She doesn't really want to.

"Hey." She reaches out, hooks her fingers around Curie's unprotesting wrist. Curie's pulse thumps against her palm, so simple that it took the Commonwealth's most advanced technology to make. "Sorry for scarin' you."

Curie lets out a weird little laugh, and at Cait's gentle tug, sits back down on the edge of the bed. "You're so fragile!" She catches the sight of Cait's expression, and clarifies. "No, I mean... all of you. And me, now, too!" She looks down at their hands, Cait still holding her wrist. "Before, it was a clinical problem: how to keep a human alive! Now it is... different. More frightful. I am unused to it. When that bear hit you, I..." She shakes her head. "This must sound so ridiculous to you. Poor little Curie, worrying over silly things."

"Nah," Cait says. She remembers being young, watching someone turn from a person to a non-thing, just meat and blood and empty staring eyes, and the echoes of that earthing into her: this could happen to you. She's tougher now, able to put people in the ground without much ado, but she remembers that first time like a punch to the gut. "It's normal. Nora or Valentine or Garvey'll probably be able to give you some giant sweepin' speech about the human condition. Now, me? All I can tell you is that it's shite. All you can do is get up again. Which I did, thanks to you."

She shuffles over, and pats the empty space next to her. Curie's mouth opens in surprise, but something lightens in her expression. Moving carefully, she scoots over and lies down against Cait's good side, pressing her ear to Cait's chest. She touches the scars again, but this time there's nothing professional about the possessive way her hand curls around Cait's ribs, holding her close.

Cait's never really been into robots, but if there's one thing that she prides herself on, it's being adaptable.

Through the window she can hear Sanctuary going about its business, the clang of Sturges hammering out sheet metal, the familiar sound of Dogmeat barking, the skittering noise of wind in the corn. Curie is warm and heavy against her, smelling of bloodflower soap. Her boots are getting dirt onto the sheets. She'll probably be irritated about that when she wakes up, but that's for later.

"Maybe next time I'll fight a deathclaw," Cait murmurs, eyes falling shut. "I bet I could win. What d'ya think?"

When Curie pinches her in revenge, she laughs hard enough to hurt.


End file.
